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Deborah Berebichez: Selling science in stilettos

This article was taken from the November 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content bysubscribing online.

Not many physicists can link Isaac Newton and the contemporary Spanish shoe designer Manolo Blahnik. Deborah Berebichez does it in style. Her video, The Physics of High Heels, uses Newton to explain why a woman wearing stilettos exerts more pressure on the ground than an elephant.

Berebichez hosts such videos on a website she created to make girls see science as sexy. Her online handle? The Science Babe.

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Born in Mexico City, New York based Berebichez has a PhD in theoretical physics from Stanford University, having worked with Nobel laureates Bob Laughlin and Steve Chu, the US Secretary of Energy.

She now works as a Wall Street quant -- an unlikely career for a woman who grew up in a community that discouraged women from learning science. "I felt invisible," she says. "I was told, 'No man wants a wife who's smarter than him.' To my parents and to my community, I was a girl who needed to get married."

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Berebichez has hosted the National Geographic TV series

Humanly Impossible and gave the keynote speech at Oprah Winfrey's White House Leadership conference. "Women are so used to only taking the opportunities that are presented to them. I want women to challenge their status quo in society and empower themselves through education."

Name: Deborah Berebichez

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Occupation: "Science Babe"

Location: New York

Need to know: She's getting more girls interested in science

This article was first published in the November 2011 issue of WIRED magazine